Superfrog – Commodore Amiga

Hello and welcome to this weeks review my Retro heads. I hope your week has started well. Today I am reviewing a great little platform game called…

Superfrog on the Commodore Amiga.

Once in a while you get to load up a game that holds your interest and engages you in a lengthy game session. Superfrog is one such game.

You take the role of the titular froggy hero, who was once a prince ( figures ), and needs to rescue his princess from an evil witch. As plots go, it’s very fairytale.

The game is absolutely fabulous from start to finish, from the intro that was made by the Amy Squirrel innovater Eric Shwartz, to the fantastic in game play. So, what can you do as Superfrog? well, you have your standard actions, running left and right, jump and with some powerups you can flap your cape to slow your descent or reach ledges previously out of range before. Your health is represented by an energy bar that is replenished by finding scattered Lucozade bottles ( same sort of promotion that Zool had with Chupa-Chups and Quavers with Push over. ). Other pick ups are found as fruits and also a little green buddy you find and can then launch at the enemies scattered around the levels. You can kill some bad guys by jumping on them ( and they die in a rather amusing fart noise ), but others like the hedgehog cannot be jumped on. Coins are the key to being able to get to the end of the level exit, so you need to make sure you get enough coins to progress. upon reaching the end of a level you are presented with a fruit machine mini game which can boost your lives or points but costs you coins that you have collected. This game really is a lot of fun to play, very nicely designed and put together. Levels have the right balance of difficulty and it will keep you coming back for more. I guess Superfrog could have been the Amiga’s answer to Sonic ( until Terraway Thomas was released ), a good cartoon icon but sadly this was his only outing on any format. Another good feature for this game is the ability to use codes for level restarts instead of beginning all over again, just another great addition to a fantastic game. During the levels you will find all sorts of hidden goodies, such as certain walls that you run into and break through to find other areas, coins, power ups and more.

Graphics:- This game has had a lot of love poured into it, from the lovely intro animation to the in-game animation, smooth and clear graphics on the sprites too. The level design oozes cute and brightly coloured graphics, and maintains a cartoon look throughout. All the different enemy sprites are well drawn and a good variety of them too.

Sound:- Again, this is so good I can’t knock it. The music is spot on, very bouncy and non intrusive. In game sounds are to the point and spot on. An excellent job all around.

Overall:- This game needs to be played, at least once if you have never had the privilege of playing it. A platform game of pure quality, it’s just a shame that no further games were made in this series. So go on, grab a copy load it up and have a play experience that will make you thirsty for more!